Orthographic and Semantic Learning During Shared Reading: Investigating Relations to Early Word Reading.

PURPOSE: Shared reading provides preschool-age children with the opportunity to learn novel, low-frequency words. Abundant empirical evidence demonstrates that children can learn the meanings of such words during shared reading, referred to as "semantic learning." However, less is known about whether children learn the spellings of words during shared reading, referred to as "orthographic learning," and whether this learning is related to early word reading. The present study tested relations between individual differences in 4- to 6-year-old children's semantic and, critically, orthographic learning during shared reading and their early word reading skill. METHOD: In an adaptation of the self-teaching paradigm, children listened to a storybook about novel inventions referred to with nonword names. Children then completed orthographic and semantic choice tests, as well as standardized measures of early word reading and phonological awareness. RESULTS: Individual differences in orthographic, but not semantic, learning during shared reading were related to early word reading, after controls for age and phonological awareness. CONCLUSIONS: This study provides a novel test of learning during shared reading, helping to specify the relation between orthographic and semantic learning and early word reading skill. These findings hold implications for theoretical perspectives on relations between learning during shared reading and early word reading, as well as implications for educational practice. SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.25492765.

Testing mechanisms underlying children's reading development: The power of learning lexical representations.

Prominent theories of reading development have separately emphasized the relevance of children's skill in learning (Share, 2008) and lexical representations (Perfetti & Hart, 2002). Integrating these ideas, we examined whether skill in learning lexical representations is a mechanism that might explain children's reading development. To do so we conducted a longitudinal study, following 139 children from Grades 3 to 5. In Grade 3, children completed measures of word reading and reading comprehension and again at Grade 5. In Grade 4, children read short stories containing novel words; they were later tested on their memory for the spellings and meanings of these new words, capturing orthographic and semantic learning, respectively. Using multiple-mediation path analysis, we tested whether children's skill in learning orthographic and semantic dimensions of new words was a mediator of individual differences in each of word reading and reading comprehension. In models controlling for nonverbal ability, working memory, vocabulary, and phonological awareness, we found two clear effects: individual differences in orthographic learning at Grade 4 mediated the gains that children made in word reading between Grades 3 and 5 and individual differences in semantic learning at Grade 4 mediated gains in reading comprehension over the same time period. These findings suggest that children's ability to learn lexical representations is a mechanism in reading development, with orthographic effects on word reading and semantic effects on reading comprehension. These findings show the power and the specificity of children's capacity to learn in determining their progress in learning to read. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

The Reading Challenges, Strategies, and Habits of University Students With a History of Reading Difficulties and Their Relations to Academic Achievement.

Given the increase in students with learning disabilities entering university, we investigated a broader group-students with a history of reading difficulties (HRD)-who are known to be at risk of academic struggles. We identified the self-reported reading challenges and strategies of university students with HRD (n = 49) and those with no history of reading difficulties (NRD; n = 88) and examined group differences and relations with first-year grade point average (GPA). Students with HRD reported more difficulties with perceived reading comprehension, concentration, and reading speed than students with NRD. Groups differed in use of reading strategies: Students with HRD were descriptively more likely to reduce reading volume by using alternative materials and chose to read based on text length and availability of alternative materials. For both groups, reading completion and concentration strategies were positively related to GPA, while perceived difficulty with reading comprehension and choosing to read based on interest were negatively related to GPA. Some strategies were negatively associated with GPA for students with NRD, but not for students with HRD. Findings revealed the challenges that students with HRD experience with reading in university and identified strategies, potentially adaptive or maladaptive, that they used to manage their academic reading load.

Drinking to Cope Mediates the Association between Dyadic Conflict and Drinking Behavior: A Study of Romantic Couples during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic spurred public health measures to reduce viral spread. Concurrently, increases in alcohol consumption and conflict in romantic partnerships were observed. Pre-pandemic research demonstrated a bidirectional association between couples' conflict and drinking. Recent research shows one's drinking motives (proximal predictors of drinking behavior) can influence another person's drinking in close relationships. It is possible that individuals are drinking to cope with distress following romantic conflict. The current study examined 348 cohabitating couples during the first lockdown in the spring of 2020. Our analyses examined coping motives as a mediator between dyadic conflict and drinking behavior using actor-partner interdependence models. Results showed that conflict was associated with greater reports of own drinking in gendered (distinguishable) and nongendered (indistinguishable) analyses through coping motives. Further, in mixed-gender couples, men partners' coping motives predicted less drinking in women, while women partners' coping motives predicted marginally more drinking in men. Partner effects may have been observed due to the increased romantic partner influence during the COVID-19 lockdown. While these results suggest that men's coping motives may be protective against women's drinking, more concerning possibilities are discussed. The importance of considering dyadic influences on drinking is highlighted; clinical and policy implications are identified.

Longitudinal predictors of French word reading difficulties among French Immersion children.

In Canada, approximately 12% of school-aged children are enrolled in French Immersion (FI), with some provinces estimating close to 30%. FI programs are intended to produce bilingual individuals who can functionally communicate in both of Canada's official languages. Yet, we are currently underinformed as to how to identify children with French word reading difficulties in such programs. Within this context, and in the interests of informing early identification of second language reading challenges, we examined early English predictors of French word reading difficulties. We also examined potential overlap of these difficulties as well as the stability of these difficulties over time. A total of 108 children in FI participated, completing measures of English nonverbal intelligence, phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, and receptive vocabulary in kindergarten, as well as English and French word reading in grades 1, 2, and 3. Logistic regressions revealed that kindergarten English phonological awareness and rapid automatized naming (RAN) distinguished between good and poor French word readers in grade 3, with adequate sensitivity and specificity. These results suggest that English phonological awareness and RAN may be appropriate early skills to identify children at risk of word reading challenges in bilingual programs. Chi-square analyses demonstrated significant overlap of English and French word reading challenges in grades 1, 2, and 3, highlighting the possibility that English and French word reading difficulties do not exist independently. Finally, chi-square analyses revealed retrospectively stable word reading difficulties in English and French. Interestingly, prospective stability was stronger for French than English word reading challenges. Overall, our results underscore the importance of considering the specific nature of word reading difficulties in bilingual readers.

Do You Use Love to Make it Lovely? The Role of Meaning Overlap across Morphological Relatives in the Development of Morphological Representations.

We examined whether and how the degree of meaning overlap between morphologically related words influences sentence plausibility judgment in children. In two separate studies with kindergarten and second-graders, English-speaking and French-speaking children judged the plausibility of sentences that included two paired target words. Some of these word pairs were morphologically related, across three conditions with differing levels of meaning overlap: low (wait-waiter), moderate (fold-folder) and high (farm-farmer). In another two conditions, word pairs were related only by phonology (rock-rocket) or semantics (car-automobile). Children in both ages and languages demonstrated higher plausibility scores as meaning overlap increased between morphologically related words. Further, kindergarten children rated sentences that included word pairs with phonological overlap as more plausible than second-grade children, while second-grade children rated those with high meaning overlap as more plausible than kindergarten children. We interpret these findings in light of current models of morphological development.

Division of Labour and Parental Mental Health and Relationship Well-Being during COVID-19 Pandemic-Mandated Homeschooling.

While the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the way parents partition tasks between one another, it is not clear how these division of labour arrangements affect well-being. Pre-pandemic research offers two hypotheses: economic theory argues optimal outcomes result from partners specialising in different tasks, whereas psychological theory argues for a more equitable division of labour. The question of which approach optimizes well-being is more pressing in recent times, with COVID-19 school closures leaving many couples with the burden of homeschooling. It is unknown whether specialisation or equity confer more benefits for mandated homeschoolers, relative to non-homeschoolers or voluntary homeschoolers. Couples (n = 962) with children in grades 1-5 completed measures of workload division and parental well-being. A linear mixed modelling in the total sample revealed that specialisation, but not equity, promoted increased parental emotional and relationship well-being. These relations were moderated by schooling status: voluntary homeschoolers' well-being benefitted from specialisation, whereas mandated homeschoolers' well-being did not benefit from either strategy; non-homeschoolers well-being benefitted from both strategies. Across the mixed-gender couples, mothers' and fathers' well-being both benefitted from specialisation; equity was only beneficial for mothers' well-being. Overall, couples might be advised to adopt highly equitable and specialised arrangements to promote both parents' well-being.

Drinking among university students with a history of reading difficulties: motivational and personality risk factors for hazardous levels of consumption.

An increasing number of students are entering university with reading difficulties-whether they be diagnosed or self-reported. Research demonstrates that university students who self-report a history of reading difficulties (HRD) have lower academic achievement and higher anxiety about academic performance as compared to peers without this history (NRD). Here we study other aspects of HRD students' university experiences, focusing on alcohol consumption. Specifically, we investigated the drinking motives and personality characteristics likely to increase risk of hazardous alcohol consumption among HRD vs. NRD undergraduates. We identified 42 HRD and 54 NRD participants based on responses to a reading history questionnaire. Participants completed questionnaires assessing hazardous drinking, drinking motives, and alcohol-risk personality traits. Both groups reported similarly high levels of hazardous drinking. HRD students reported drinking more to conform with peers, and less to enhance positive moods, than NRD students. HRD students also scored higher in the alcohol personality risk of impulsivity. Our results support a unique pattern of motives and personality risks among HRD students, a pattern that likely puts them at increased risk for sustained hazardous drinking. Clinical implications for preventing problem drinking among HRD undergraduates are considered.

Two aspects of psychological functioning in undergraduates with a history of reading difficulties: anxiety and self-efficacy.

Reading difficulties have been associated with problems in psychological functioning, including challenges in both anxiety and self-efficacy. This study was designed to determine whether such psychological functioning problems are specific to the academic sphere or more global. First-year undergraduate students with and without a history of reading difficulties (n = 40 and 46, respectively) completed standardized questionnaires on general and academic anxiety, and social and academic self-efficacy. Students with a history of reading difficulties reported higher academic anxiety, but comparable general anxiety, relative to those with no such history. Students with a history of reading difficulties also reported lower academic self-efficacy, but comparable social self-efficacy, relative to those with no such history. These findings suggest that students with a history of reading difficulties, as compared to those without such history, experience academic-specific mental health symptoms involving heightened anxiety and low self-efficacy as they enter university. These results point to the need for focused and targeted assessments to be able to capture difficulties they experience with anxiety and self-efficacy and interventions to help them cope with these difficulties. More broadly, the findings have implications for how universities assess academic vulnerabilities and provide access to specific course accommodations.

Learning Orthographic and Semantic Representations Simultaneously During Shared Reading.

Purpose The value of shared reading as an opportunity for learning word meanings, or semantics, is well established; it is less clear whether children learn about the orthography, or word spellings, in this context. We tested whether children can learn the spellings and meanings of new words at the same time during a tightly controlled shared reading session. We also examined whether individual differences in either or both of orthographic and semantic learning during shared reading in English were related to word reading in English and French concurrently and 6 months longitudinally in emergent English-French bilinguals. Method Sixty-two Grade 1 children (35 girls; M age = 75.89 months) listened to 12 short stories, each containing four instances of a novel word, while the examiner pointed to the text. Choice measures of the spellings and meanings of the novel words were completed immediately after reading each set of three stories and again 1 week later. Standardized measures of word reading as well as controls for nonverbal reasoning, vocabulary, and phonological awareness were also administered. Results Children scored above chance on both immediate and delayed measures of orthographic and semantic learning. Orthographic learning was related to both English and French word reading at the same time point and 6 months later. In contrast, the relations between semantic learning and word reading were nonsignificant for both languages after including controls. Conclusion Shared reading is a valuable context for learning both word meanings and spellings, and the learning of orthographic representations in particular is related to word reading abilities. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.13877999.

Building Meaning: Meta-analysis of Component Skills Supporting Reading Comprehension in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

The ability to understand what one reads, or reading comprehension, is central to academic success. For many children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), reading comprehension is a noted area of challenge. For children with typical development, it is well established that successful reading comprehension requires two broad skills: word reading and oral language. For children with ASD, word reading is often believed to be relatively intact, even in the face of poor reading comprehension, suggesting that deficits in oral language, more than in word reading, underlie reading comprehension deficits. Yet, extant research has suggested the importance of both skills. To clarify the role of these skills in the reading comprehension of children with ASD, we conducted a meta-analysis. ERIC, PsycINFO, PubMed, and Proquest Dissertation & Theses were searched for studies of reading comprehension in children with ASD, published up to May 2019. We identified 26 relevant studies about children with ASD (aged 6-18 years) that included both a measure of word reading and reading comprehension. Hunt-Schmidt Random Effects Models showed similar mean correlations between reading comprehension and the component skills of word reading (M r = 0.65 [0.27-1.03]) and oral language (M r = 0.61 [0.33-0.88]). These findings demonstrate that these skills are essential for reading comprehension in children with ASD, making contributions of similar size. This study advances our understanding of the mechanisms by which children with ASD understand what they read, providing a foundation on which to build programmatic research into each of these mechanisms. LAY SUMMARY: Academic progress is closely tied to children's ability to understand what they read. Yet reading comprehension is difficult for many children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). We used a statistical method to summarize existing research on the skills that children with ASD use to understand what they read. We found that the reading comprehension of children with ASD was related to a similar extent to both their ability to read individual words and their oral language skills. These findings suggest that both areas should be assessed in order to determine appropriate interventions to support reading comprehension for children with ASD. Autism Res 2021, 14: 840-858. © 2021 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals LLC.

The Debate: What Are Aerosol-Generating Procedures in Dentistry? A Rapid Review.

INTRODUCTION: This article aims to review the current national and international dental guidance produced during the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic to identify the level of consensus on aerosol-generating dental procedures (AGDPs). The outcomes intend to encourage increased collaboration with respect to dental guidelines in relation to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, as well as to improve decision making and safety for dental patients and staff. METHODS: This rapid review was conducted by 2 authors (MKV and KD), with the support of a third author (SD), to assess current guidelines related to dental AGDPs. This streamlined review approach allowed synthesis of data in an efficient manner in the rapidly evolving environment associated with the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. RESULTS: The findings identified 1) a lack of consistency in reporting which procedures were deemed an AGDP; 2) that high-speed handpieces, air-water syringes, and mechanical scalers were consistently considered high-risk AGDPs; 3) a lack of consensus on the risk of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) transmission with the use of slow-speed handpieces; 4) a general agreement, when described, that rubber dam and high-volume evacuation can significantly reduce aerosol production; and 5) a lack of consistency in reporting whether procedures constitute a low, moderate, or high risk of COVID-19 transmission. The findings are discussed in relation to the guidance and future recommendations. CONCLUSION: It is recommended that future published guidance should indicate the risk stratification (low/moderate/high) of each procedure/exposure in a standardized international approach. KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER STATEMENT: The results of this rapid review can be used by clinicians to increase their awareness of international guidance on aerosol-generating procedures in dentistry. It will also encourage those publishing future guidance to provide an internationally standardized, risk-stratified approach to describing aerosol-generating procedures. Currently, it allows clinicians to consider aerosol-generating procedures as a risk spectrum.

Outcomes and complications associated with malar onlays: literature review and case series of 119 implants.

Alloplastic malar onlays have been used by surgeons to correct or enhance the midfacial skeleton for over 40 years. Case series have shown respectable results using different alloplastic materials in various maxillofacial subsites. However, these articles include small numbers of patients with limited follow up. We present a literature review specifically concentrating on porous polyethylene (Medpor, Stryker) and polyethyl ether ketone (PEEK) malar onlays. We illustrate the technique used by a single oral and maxillofacial surgeon for placement of 119 implants in 61 patients over a 14-year period, and show the results of this work with long-term follow up. A complication rate of 2.5% in this cohort was reported, with follow up of three years, demonstrating that this technique for midfacial correction is successful in both the short and the long term.

MorphoLex-FR: A derivational morphological database for 38,840 French words.

Studies on morphological processing in French, as in other languages, have shown disparate results. We argue that a critical and long-overlooked factor that could underlie these diverging results is the methodological differences in the calculation of morphological variables across studies. To address the need for a common morphological database, we present MorphoLex-FR, a sizeable and freely available database with 12 variables for prefixes, roots, and suffixes for the 38,840 words of the French Lexicon Project. MorphoLex-FR constitutes a first step to render future studies addressing morphological processing in French comparable. The procedure we used for morphological segmentation and variable computation is effectively the same as that in MorphoLex, an English morphological database. This will allow for cross-linguistic comparisons of future studies in French and English that will contribute to our understanding of how morphologically complex words are processed. To validate these variables, we explored their influence on lexical decision latencies for morphologically complex nouns in a series of hierarchical regression models. The results indicated that only morphological variables related to the suffix explained lexical decision latencies. The frequency and family size of the suffix exerted facilitatory effects, whereas the percentage of more frequent words in the morphological family of the suffix was inhibitory. Our results are in line with previous studies conducted in French and in English. In conclusion, this database represents a valuable resource for studies on the effect of morphology in visual word processing in French.

A beginning exploration of text generation abilities in university students with a history of reading difficulties.

There is a fundamental lack of understanding of how university students with a history of reading difficulties perform on various demanding literacy tasks. We compared the text generation skills, measured with timed summary writing and proofreading tasks, of university students with a history of reading difficulties to those of students with no such history. We further examined whether between-group differences in text generation skills remained after controlling for transcription skills (spelling and handwriting fluency), word reading, and reading comprehension. Forty-six university students with a history of reading difficulties were matched on age, gender, and non-verbal intelligence to 46 students without this history. We found that the students with a history of reading difficulties performed poorer on both measures of text generation than students without this history. When differences in transcription skills, word reading, and reading comprehension were controlled, we found that only differences in timed summary writing remained significant. These results suggest that students with a history of reading difficulties experience challenges with specific aspects of text generation that are beyond what one would expect from their difficulties with transcription and word reading. We suggest that, if not addressed, text generation deficits are likely to create obstacles for academic success.

Young readers' skill in learning spellings and meanings of words during independent reading.

Independent reading offers children opportunities to learn the spellings and meanings of words. Evidence to date shows that older children take advantage of these orthographic and semantic learning opportunities. We provided a much-needed test of whether young readers can acquire spellings and meanings of novel words through independent reading as well as of whether each of these skills explains individual differences in word reading and reading comprehension. To test theory stringently, we assessed whether these effects are separable from those of decoding. A sample of 66 English-speaking children in Grades 1 and 2 independently read stories containing novel words referring to new inventions (e.g., a veap used to clean fish tanks). We scored accuracy in reading the novel words in the stories to assess target decoding. Children completed choice measures evaluating their learning of the novel words' spellings and meanings along with word reading and reading comprehension and controls for age, short-term memory, vocabulary, and phonological awareness. Scores for both the orthographic and semantic learning measures were higher with successful decoding than without it. At both grade levels, children were above chance in choosing correct spellings and meanings even when they had not accurately decoded the target a single time. In terms of individual differences, after accounting for controls including target decoding, orthographic learning was related to word reading and semantic learning was related to reading comprehension. Young children have powerful skill in learning spellings and meanings through their independent reading, with highly specific impacts of such learning on reading outcomes.

MorphoLex: A derivational morphological database for 70,000 English words.

Most of the new words a reader will find are morphologically complex. Also, theoretical models of language processing propose that morphology plays an important role in visual word processing. Nevertheless, studies on the subject show contradicting results that are difficult to reconcile. One factor that may explain this is the lack of a sizeable and reliable morphological database. As a consequence, there are enormous methodological differences in the way the values for morphological variables are calculated across studies. We present a sizeable and freely available database with six new variables for affixes and three for roots for 68,624 words from the English Lexicon Project. We further studied by means of regression models the influence of these new variables on the lexical decision latencies of 4,724 morphologically complex nouns that included one root and one suffix. Results showed that root frequency and suffix length had a facilitatory effect, whereas the percentage of more frequent words in the morphological family of the suffix had an inhibitory effect on latencies. After controlling for collinearity, root family size, suffix family size, suffix P*, and suffix frequency also had facilitatory effects. These results shed new light on the importance of suffix length and the frequency of the lexical competitors of the family of a suffix. This database represents a valuable resource for studies on the effect of morphology in visual word processing in English and can be found at https://github.com/hugomailhot/MorphoLex-en .

The development of morphological representations in young readers: a cross-modal priming study.

The way children organize words in their memory has intrigued many researchers in the past 20 years. Given the large number of morphologically complex words in many languages, the influence of morphemes on this organization is being increasingly examined. The aim of this study was to understand how morphemic information influences English-speaking children's word recognition. Children in grades 3 and 5 were asked to complete a lexical decision priming task. Prime-target pairs varied in semantic similarity, with low (e.g., belly-bell), moderate (e.g., lately-late), and high similarity relations (e.g., boldly-bold). There were also word pairs similar in form only (e.g., spinach-spin) and in semantics only (e.g., garbage-trash). Primes were auditory and targets were presented visually. Analyses of children's lexical decision times revealed graded priming effects as a function of the convergence of form and meaning. These results indicate that developing readers do not necessarily need to lexicalize morphological units to facilitate word recognition. Their ability to process the morphological structure of words depends on their ability to develop connections between form and meaning.

How Children Become Sensitive to the Morphological Structure of the Words That They Read.

Background: We tested the predictions of models of word reading development as to the effects of repeated exposure on reading of derived words. Aim: Our goal was to examine the impacts of variables that quantify different aspects of this exposure: base frequency, family frequency, and family size. Methods and Samples: In Experiment 1, we asked 75 children in Grades 3 and 5 to read derived words with low surface frequencies (e.g., questionable) that varied in base frequency, family frequency, and family size. In Experiment 2, we asked 41 adults to read the same set of words. Results: In Experiment 1, only base frequency made a contribution to word reading accuracy that was independent of the other two variables of interest (family size and family frequency) and the control variables (surface frequency, semantic relatedness, and neighborhood size). In Experiment 2, a similar pattern of results emerged, this time on reading speed. Conclusion: Together, results of these two studies suggest that base frequency has a special role in both children's and adults' reading of derived words. These findings suggest that it plays a specific role in development and maintenance of sensitivity to morphological structure in reading.

Morphology and Spelling in French: A Comparison of At-Risk Readers and Typically Developing Children.

We present two studies that examine the role of morphology in French spelling. In Study 1, we examined the concurrent and longitudinal relationships between inflectional awareness and derivational awareness and spelling within a sample of 77 children in a French immersion programme in Canada. Children completed a non-verbal reasoning measure and French measures of phonological awareness, word reading, vocabulary, morphological awareness, and spelling. Results showed that inflectional morphological awareness in Grade 3 was a predictor of spelling in the same grade. Inflectional awareness in Grade 2 predicted Grade 3 spelling, controlling for reading-related skills and spelling at Grade 2. These analyses support the role of inflectional morphological awareness in the development of spelling of children of a range of reading and spelling abilities. In contrast, derivational awareness in Grades 2 and 3 did not predict spelling concurrently in both grades respectively. Study 2 contrasted the morphological errors in the spellings of six children at risk for reading difficulties with those of six chronological age-matched and six reading level-matched children. Analyses showed that at-risk children exhibited more difficulties with spelling roots and suffixes in words as compared with their age-matched peers, although they performed similarly to children matched on reading level. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.